The Peranakan Trail was customised for the Peranakan Association and guided by Chew Keng Kiat, Peter Pak and Gan Su-lin. This report was documented and contributed by Gan Su-lin. More on Cheong Choon Seng here Find out more on Tan Kheam Hock here Find out more on what is a live tomb here Find out more on Pang Cheng Yean who was a pioneer banker here Footnote: Customised tours on request can be […]

Dateline : 26 Tuesday 7-pm – 9.30pm The Ngee Ann Kongsi auditorium of the sprawled out spanking new campus of University Town, NUS fills up. The event: “Moving House” jointly organised by NUS Museum and All Things Bukit Brown. The highlight: a timely resurrection of an award winning documentary by film maker Tan Pin Pin. “Moving House” made in 2001 which followed the Chew family , one of 55,000 Singapore families forced to relocate the remains of their relatives […]

by Gan Su-lin and Catherine Lim The tomb staked 1888 or rather its companion is used as an illustration in the LTA sign boards at Bukit Brown to explain to the public how to look out for and identify whether an ancestor could be affected by the 8 lane highway that is going to be built through Bukit Brown. The resident of Tomb 1888 was exhumed on Thursday 21 June 2012 by his descendant, a great grandson who has requested […]

Luah Kim Kway (赖金奎) the Chivalrous by Ang Yik Han On first impression, his is a typical story of a poor migrant made good. Orphaned when young, Luah Kim Kway left for the Nanyang at the age of 19 to seek his fortune. Like other uneducated migrants who toiled unceasingly, he was at various times a coolie, a hawker and a miner before hitting his first pot of gold as a building contractor. Subsequently, he branched out into the rubber […]

On Sunday, June 17, all things Bukit Brown was privileged to have battlefield archaeologist, Jon Cooper, of The Adam Park Project led the inaugural Battlefield Tour at Cemetery Hill, as Bukit Brown was known 70 years ago when a battle was fought shortly before Singapore fell to the Japanese Imperial Army. Read his report here. Listen to his tour highlights here. The tour starts on the bridge where Sime Road meets Lornie Road, for an explanation of how that corner came to be called […]

By Norman Cho My Grandfather – Cho Kim Leong Someone once told me that no one is truly dead until the last person who remembers him is gone. This statement is one I totally agree with! I may not have known my grandfather directly, but he still lives in the memories of those who knew him and in the stories of him that I learned from them. Far from be any luminary in the social history of Malaya, […]

Seh Ong Hill Introduction The Bukit Brown Cemetery Complex mapped out by Mok Ly Yng based on the land lot tracings from this map shows a surviving area of approximately 390 acres. The biggest Chinese cemetery outside of China consists of four identifiable cemeteries bordering each other : Bukit Brown, Lau Sua (Old Hill), Kopi Sua (Coffee Hill) and Seh Ong Sua (Ong Clan Hill) This map shows the various cemeteries demarcated In the following article Jave Wu traces the […]

Pantuns by Norman Cho The pantun is sometimes described as Malay poetry. It consists of stanzas made up of rhyming quatrains (4-liners). Its history was thought to have originated from golden period of the Malays during the 15th century. When a pantun is sung, it becomes the dondang sayang (melody of love). Normally, the last word of the first line would rhyme with that of the third line, and, the second line would rhyme with the fourth line. If […]

“Moving House” Tuesday 26th June 7 pm – 9 pm University Town Auditorium in Kent Ridge NUS Museum and All Things Bukit Brown presents “Moving House” – a screening, a presentation and a Q and A session on the next significant development for the planned 8 lane highway that will cut through the cemetery – Exhumation. The documentation team led by Dr Hui Yew Foong undertook its first documentation of a private exhumation of a staked tomb affected by […]

By Claire Leow and Gan Su-Lin With the permission of Toh Yong Soon, we share the exhumation rituals for his maternal great grandfather, Chen Zhong Lue (d. 3 Sept 1926), buried at Kopi Sua. Click below for the video links: The pre-exhumation ritual starts with prayers for the earth deity. Here, the grandsons and grand-daughters follow the guide of a Taoist priest and recite prayers. The ritual was chosen at a certain day and time. For instance, those born […]